I happened to stumble upon an article entitled Defining Realignment from The Economist, which analyzes where the
American electorate stands on policy choices and priorities alone, freeing them
from party labels to see what kind of winning policy platforms might emerge in
the future. When I saw the thesis of the
article, I immediately knew that this related to Hotelling & the
median-voter theorem as a tool to win an election based on simple majority
rule. What this article is doing is the homework on
what those winning policy platforms may be so that Candidate X and Y can use
this research to attract most votes from a broad electorate.
A quick summary on Downs and Hotelling in its relation to the
class: Hotelling argues that a rational
voter would choose a candidate whose views showed most “proximity” to its own;
so, it incentivizes political parties to take positions most likely to convince
the voter in the electorate’s ideological middle.
Researchers from The
Economist used an online poll of “over 7,000 registered voters, which asked
respondents both to express their preferences on 12 different issues and how
much they cared.” They then multiplied
each position by its importance and added them up for all voters. Using analysis, they can find which party
they might support.
The Conclusion: Using the candidates’ actual platforms in the
2016 race, the results indicated that 52% of registered voters were closer to
Hillary Clinton’s basket of policies than to Donald Trump’s. Remember that this approach removes the
error of any party loyalties. This
means that Hotelling’s median voter sits to the left of the midpoint
between the presidential candidates. The
results also matched with Hotelling’s argument that the most ideologically
extreme platforms are not worth it because the margins of the median voter
theorem curve just don’t garner much votes compared to the middle.
Implications
for the two parties: The
winning coalition, or suggested “secret formula”, could be built around an
anti-globalization message. The Economist argues that “the candidate would have to
take centrist positions on abortion, gay marriage and gun control, and alienate
business by backing popular but costly government benefits like national health
insurance.” IF you combined this with
supporting a border wall, opposing the North American Free Trade Agreement and
ignoring climate change, this basket would secure 51.2% of the vote against a
more socially liberal platform backing NAFTA and immigration: close enough to
maintain a stable two-party system across election cycles.
I
think it’s important to remember that Hotelling & Down’s model does fail to
account for turnout, since its big assumption is that there are no abstentions. While this is not a fatal problem -
especially if the demographic studies are "likely voters" instead of
"eligible voters", it does add a degree of uncertainty and risk - a politician may be deterred from
repositioning even if it apparently makes sense if it risks alienating and
lowering turnout among the base. This creates a degree of
"stickiness" in terms of policy positioning.
No comments:
Post a Comment